Stewart Remington? The name surprised me; it was one of the six I’d read to Eddie Schultz over the phone last week. So Cornell’s lawyer was one of his suspects.
I said, “He should get another lawyer.”
“I suppose he should. But he doesn’t know how to tell Remington he wants somebody else, and he doesn’t know any other lawyers.”
“He’s helpless, in other words.”
Kate frowned at me. “You say that as though you think he’s being a weakling or something. He really is helpless. He’s in the hospital with half a dozen broken bones, there’s a police guard on him, there’s a detective with a vendetta against him, and he doesn’t know what to do next. He is helpless.”
“There’s nothing for me to do,” I said, because I knew that was the question behind all this: Will you do something, Mitch? “With my background,” I said, “if I went to Manzoni’s captain, it would just put the icing on the cake. Cornell would really be in the soup.”
“He’s really in the soup now.”
“Well, what do you want from me?” I was getting exasperated. She clearly wanted something, she had it in mind there was something I could do, but she wouldn’t come out and ask me. She just kept on describing Cornell’s predicament. It was true that he was in deep trouble, but it was also true there was no sensible way I could help him.
So she said, “I want you to find the killer.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Are you out of your mind? Do you know what someone like Manzoni would do to me if he found me poking around, trying to open a case that he wants shut?”
“I hadn’t expected an answer like that from you, Mitch. I expected you to say no at first, but not for that reason.”
“I have my moments of bravery,” I said, “like any other man. But I also have my moments of prudence. I don’t see where this affair is any of my business. I want to stay away from it.”
“It’s a terrible miscarriage of justice,” she said.
“Kate, there are terrible miscarriages of justice every day, in every city under the sun. There are three billion people on earth, and most of them will be treated shabbily and cruelly and even violently at least once in their lives. That isn’t a reason, Kate, for me to stick my neck out.”
“He needs your help, Mitch. He asked for your help. He has nobody else to turn to.”
I could feel it closing in on me. “Kate, what on earth could I do? Even if I tried, what could I do? I can make some phone calls and find him a good lawyer, that would be the best thing.”
“A lawyer won’t beat Manzoni,” she said, “not if Manzoni is determined. You know that, Mitch.”
“Eventually—”
“Eventually? After a year, two years? Even six months, Mitch. Put someone like Ronald Cornell in an asylum for six months? What do you think it would do to him?”
I said, “There’s no reason to believe I’d succeed, even if I did try.”
“That’s the worst excuse of all,” she said.
I looked down at the hole I was digging, the concrete blocks I was putting in place. I didn’t want to leave all this. I didn’t want to expose myself to anybody like Detective Manzoni, I didn’t want to pry into the unhappy world that Ronald Cornell lived in, I didn’t want to go out of this house at all.
Kate said, “I talked to him about money.”
I looked up at her in surprise. “Money?”
“He wouldn’t want you to do it for nothing,” she said. “And we could use more money.”
Neither of us looked directly at the new stacks of supplies that had just been delivered, but all at once I was almost painfully conscious of them; in the corner of my vision.
I said, “What kind of money were you talking about?”
“He told me his store has been averaging a profit of about twenty thousand dollars a year, but they’ve been putting a lot of it back into the business, for a wider stock and redecorating the store and advertising and so on. So they don’t have a lot of money in cash. But now that his partner is dead, Ronald owns the whole business outright, so he offered us a part ownership. Fifteen percent.”
“Fifteen percent of the store? For how long?”
“Forever. For as long as the store stays open. If the profit keeps on the same as before, that’s three thousand dollars a year, every year. We could use something like that, Mitch.”
Of course we could. Who couldn’t use extra income every year, with no work done for it?
Except at the beginning, of course. Work would have to be done for it at the beginning.
I said, “To be paid to us if I find the killer?”
“No. Regardless of what happens, just if you’ll agree to try.”
I shook my head. “I won’t do it that way. If I don’t succeed, I don’t want any payment.”
“Well, that would be up to you,” she said, and from the sudden lightening of her expression I saw that she had taken my last statement to mean that I was agreeing to take on the job.
And what else could I do? I remembered Ronald Cornell in this basement, timid and weak and ineffective, but pushing himself to be more, because his friend had been killed. Taking his coat and boots off before finding out if there was anyone at home or not, because he was determined to wait if the house was empty. It had to have been a strain for him to come to me, to come out of himself, to act. Just as it would be a strain for me.
Kate was saying, “I told the police I was his aunt, that’s how they let me in. And I said his uncle might be coming to visit him, too.”
“Did you see Manzoni at all?”
“No, and I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Does he have special visiting hours?”
“Yes. You could see him tonight, if you wanted, between seven-thirty and nine.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go see him tonight.”
“Thank you, Mitch,” she said.
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